April 2020

April 30, 2020

I've been looking for ways to illustrate the infection case rate in the County since that is most pertinent to us here in B'game (verses the state, the country, New York City or whatever). Try this local comparison on for size.

The County has 766,573 residents. PacBell-AT&T- now Oracle Park, home of the SF Giants, holds 40,800 people. So if the Giants sold-out 18 games and the 19th game sold three quarters of the seats that would be everyone in the County going to one game. According to Wikipedia, there are "1,500 club seats at the field level behind home plate". If we get around a dozen new cases per day over the next month that the Shelter-in-Place is in effect, the total cases would just fill the Field Club section at Oracle once. That's not once per game--just once. Just some perspective on today's total case count of 1,177.

It also reminds me how much I miss Major League baseball and the local BYBA and BHS games. As the County relaxes some of the outdoor restrictions we need to keep up the SIP discipline, but it may not be obvious how to balance reopening with the impending economic hardships.

April 28, 2020

Although I now reside in San Mateo (past forty 40 years) I grew up in Burlingame starting in 1950. What a fabulous city to grow up in and enjoy the city in the 50s and 60s while attending Roosevelt Grammar School, Burlingame Intermediate School and Burlingame High School.

I’ve noticed the Daily Journal abbreviates Burlingame as BGAME. I contacted some old chums and they agree the abbreviation has always been BLGM (pronounced Bilgum). Hopefully your staff can make this correction and refer to this beautiful city as it should be. Thanks.

Paul Stuppi

San Mateo

I would note we just lost our greatest Burlingame historian, Martha May, last week so the absolute best person to ask can no longer be asked. You can find Martha's self-penned, dry-as-she-liked-it obituary here. Martha was a stickler for accuracy, an avid archivist and a steady hand at the Historical Society. She will be missed. At the next meeting perhaps we can solicit all of the nicknames for our little burg.

I recall Herb Caen referring to us as B'lingame and suggesting it be pronounced Blingum. I'll bet there is a Caen clipping or two in the archives to correct my memory! Thanks Paul for a provocative look at our nickname--gotta tell you I still prefer B'game! Just don't call it Boringame.

April 27, 2020

The City-funded support for local businesses, residents and charities is coming into focus as the DJ reports today

The Burlingame City Council agreed to build a $500,000 grant program for local businesses, while setting aside $250,000 to purchase gift cards for struggling families and donating another $250,000 to service providers. The program is to be administered by the San Mateo County Economic Development Association, or SAMCEDA, which is also operating a similar program through the county.

Noting the city’s contribution capacity is limited, Councilman Michael Brownrigg said the Burlingame Back in Business program would likely serve about 50 companies fitting a limited criteria with grants capped at about $10,000.

Officials also agreed to purchase about 1,000 gift cards from Visa or Mastercard worth $250 which would be distributed to families in Burlingame, with hopes the cards would be redeemed at local businesses. Councilmembers had first discussed attempting to restrict spending to a specific zip code, but ultimately determined allowing flexibility for families who need assistance would be more valuable. Those eligible for the program will be contacted by the city’s utility provider, which maintains a list of those who qualify for financial aid.

We are in the fourth quarter of the city's fiscal year which ends on June 30th. Using last year's financial report as a rosy baseline, page 34 shows the $84.5M of revenue had major components of property taxes (25.7%), sales and use taxes (21.1%) and the biggie that is also the most at risk, hotel tax (34.8%). When Michael Brownrigg says that the city's contribution capacity is "limited", he ain't kidding. We could easily see the hotel tax get cut in half for the year--which would be a $15M hit to the budget.

Even at the end of June when the next report arrives, we won't really see the complete picture since the pain arrived at the end of the third quarter. Another DJ piece on the San Mateo budget shortfall lays out the timing issue

“There’s a challenge we have on sales tax in that the data we get is essentially six months in arrears. The most recent sales tax data we have is for the third quarter of 2019,” said Finance Director Richard Lee. “We won’t see the true impact of COVID-19 for another six months. … It’s a similar concept for [hotel] tax.”

San Mateo's predicting a $7M "structural imbalance" next year which seems small to me. It's total projected budget is $251M but only 14.3% in sales and hotel tax, so we shall see.

April 20, 2020

Four months ago, we looked at the new Calpers chief investment officer Ben Meng's early moves to shore up the municipal and state workers' pension fund here. We watch this because the City sends a sizeable chunk of pension money to Calpers to invest on its behalf. We already know the coming year or two is going to be ugly for city finances. The hotel tax ("TOT") has evaporated and it's certain the various sources of sales tax are going to be down substantially. So sending cash off to Calpers in Sacramento has to be funded from somewhere and how Calpers manages it is important to all of us. A piece in today's Wall Street Journal highlights Meng's call to exit several "tail risk" funds--meaning they hedge against rare events (the "long tail" in a probability distribution).

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System was well prepared to cash in on a stock market selloff. Until a few months ago. After suffering big losses during the financial crisis, the $371 billion pension fund hedged against another dramatic downturn by investing in three funds designed to produce big payoffs when markets fall steeply. But the pension, also known as Calpers, decided to sell out of these hedges last year, giving up what could have been a payday of more than $1 billion.

Some members of the Calpers board were caught by surprise. “He took away a risk strategy that the board had approved without telling the board,” Ms. Brown said in an interview. Calpers began investing in both funds in August 2017 and developed a third internally managed fund with a similar strategy. Calpers decided to unwind the positions in October, and by March it only had a residual stake left in one fund-- LongTail Alpha LLC , according to documents and people familiar with the changes.

Mr. Meng, who took over as the pension’s chief investment officer in January 2019, said he has no regrets about exiting Universa and the other funds. “Knowing what we know, we would make the exact same decision,” he said in an interview.

We shall see how the board and Meng address this. Meng may have put in a viable substitute strategy--it's a story that is just starting, but one that highlights how expensive this lockdown will be for everyone regardless of whether they are working now or not and regardless of whether they are stock market investors or not. Personally, I'm glad I live in a fairly well-run (financially speaking) city and that over the years we have chosen to limit our interdependence on other cities.

April 16, 2020

It's time to start a new thread on our tracking of the coronavirus. You can see the prior post from March 24th and the path of the virus' growth in the County here. Today's County report at SMChealth.org shows 16 new cases in the County for a total of 767. 67 cases are currently in hospital and 7,295 total tests have been done with a 10% positive ratio. Recall there are about 769,000 people in the County so the testing rate is still minuscule.

There was a great human interest story in the Daily Journal yesterday about Officer Steve Vega. I've chatted with the officer on the street before (the last time was in front of the Apple store during the on-going patrol there) and I'm thrilled to hear he is better. He may be down at Stanford right now donating

After recovering from COVID-19, Burlingame police Officer Steve Vega is hoping the antibodies in his blood can be used to treat others infected with the disease. Vega, 55, is among the first participants in a new effort by Stanford Blood Center to treat COVID-19 patients while the world waits for a vaccine to be developed.

The 22-year Burlingame officer is set to donate his plasma, the liquid in blood, at Stanford this Thursday and however many times is needed after that.

Also in the news is some data on how the work-at-home trend for self-isolating plays out across the economy. Having worked full-time from home for more than a decade one article about the trials the newbies are discovering was gratifying to read. On the data side, the Wall Street Journal has a piece titled "The Lucky Stay-at-home 37%"

A newly released study called “How Many Jobs Can Be Done at Home?” reckons that 37% of all U.S. jobs can plausibly be done at home, meaning that nearly two-thirds cannot. The study’s authors, from the University of Chicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute, add that their 37% estimate is at the “upper bound of what might be feasible.” Along with other studies, this one also finds that those in jobs that can be done from home “typically earn more.” By their calculations, for example, 37% of jobs that can be done at home account for 46% of all wages.

Those who have stressed the need to get our economy up and running again are sometimes criticized for favoring profits over people. But the Becker-Friedman paper underscores that those lower down on the socio-economic scale are most in need of a re-opening for their livelihoods.

That's an important point that can be missed during the high-anxiety zeitgeist we are in. Here is the Avenew showing that zeitgeist.

April 12, 2020

The SF Chronicle let a writer drift south to our little town for a feel good restaurant story--and who doesn't want one of those right now.

Noriaki Kojima and Masayuki Tadokoro weren’t exactly ready to open their Burlingame restaurant, Curry Hyuga. They hadn’t put up a sign. They hadn’t remodeled the dining room. They hadn’t done any outreach. But it was March 16, the day of the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place announcement, and they realized they needed to make a decision fast.

They sped off to Burlingame City Hall and walked out with a business license 30 minutes before it closed, making their Japanese curry concept probably the last restaurant in the city to obtain one before the stay-home order took effect at midnight. In less than two weeks, the restaurant has made enough money to hire three employees.

While the situation isn’t ideal, opening has proved worth the effort. Being closed and paying rent for an unknown length of time would be worse, Kojima said.

I had a business school professor in entrepreneurial management who made the case that starting a business in a down cycle wasn't insane since it forces the team to be very careful with cash burn from the start and it positions them to ride the recovery wave back up. Let's hope that is the case here since it definitely takes guts. Click through for more details on the menu and the background of the founders. It's at the Laguna intersection.

April 09, 2020

I had my next post outlined in my head when I read this piece in today's Wall Street Journal by a couple of podcasters that says the same thing only better:

We really knew there was a crisis when San Francisco, which 13 years ago banned single-use plastic bags in grocery stores, would now prohibit reusable bags as part of its effort to prevent spread of the novel coronavirus.

Plastic-bag bans aren’t the only “green” policy that has been found wanting in the real world of a pandemic. For decades environmentalists have hectored us to get out of our cars and crowd into subways and buses. “From Amsterdam to Tempe, Arizona, more and more cities are finding that eliminating cars from their streets makes people happier and healthier,” Fast Company reported in January, noting with satisfaction that in one Helsinki neighborhood, “none of the new apartments come with parking.”

You can’t have a car-free community without high-density housing, so environmentalists have promoted apartment living and a war on suburban “sprawl.” But now those living in dense apartment buildings risk their lives by walking out the door into common spaces and shared surfaces, even before they reach the crowded, densely populated streets below. Suburban families, by contrast, are often able to maintain community connections even while socially distancing and are more likely to have additional room for their children to roam while out of school.

Environmentalists talk a lot about “externalities,” the unintended consequences of economic decisions. The pandemic is a reminder that policy decisions have externalities too.

The question is will we learn anything from the COVID-19 onslaught? Let’s face it, this will not be the last pandemic. We’ve had H1N1, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Russian Flu, Spanish Flu and the regular flu that mutates every year, so the vaccine manufacturers are half-guessing each year. More than one person has said to me “Face it, we will look like Manhattan in 20 years.” Well maybe, but maybe not. Now is the time to tell Sen. Scott Weiner—the enemy of single-family zoning—and the YIMBYS to take a hike.

April 08, 2020

Here's one more water-related post to follow the last two on sea-levels and drinking water. We had two nice, moderately heavy storms over the weekend and into Monday. We needed the rain everywhere except on El Camino. Bad flooding in a dozen spots on our main thoroughfare has been a known issue for decades. I just don't get why Caltrans won't do something simple to fix the known hot spots. Yes, we have a multi-hundreds of millions of dollars upgrade in the works, but with the massive state shortfall from COVID-19 I'll bet roads drop down the priority list.

In the meantime, why can't Caltrans just get into some of the drains and clear them out? We know the drains drain--just not fast enough. I don't want to put it back on the city's Public Works who have already stepped up on ECR maintenance beyond their remit, but it might have to come to that. "All plumbing is local" to paraphrase Tip O'Neill. Here's the recurring flood at the end of my street. There's a drain right there. The drain on the other corner drains well enough if I keep it clear, which I do. The flooded one drains after about a day--there had been no rain for more than 12 hours when I took this photo. Where's Roto-Rooter?

April 03, 2020

While we are on the topic of water (see last post), we have some updates on the drinking water situation. The Chronicle is reporting

Statewide snow pack measured 53% of average for the critical April 1 survey — the time when snow levels are typically at their peak, helping inform how much melt-off will pour into California’s many reservoirs. The figure is the 11th lowest in 71 years of record-keeping. The problems, though, are somewhat muted by last winter’s big snowfall. The 40% of the state that is flirting with drought is a fraction of what it would be if there had been back-to-back dry years.

“For a dry year like this one, it’s nice that the preceding year was a wet one,” said Mike Anderson, state climatologist with the California Department of Water Resources, which conducts the snow surveys. Snow typically provides nearly a third of the state’s water. San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy was at about 68% of capacity last week, slightly more than average for the time.

The question on Anderson’s mind, and the minds of other weather watchers in California, is whether this winter was a one-off or if it is the beginning of a multiyear drought, along the lines of what the state experienced between 2012 and 2017.

The city of B'game is in the midst of updating our Urban Water Management Plan, an every five year exercise, that will for the first time estimate the impact of a five-year drought. Prior plans were only required to account for a three-year drought. I'll be watching for the update especially regarding total consumption vis a vis all of the building that was going on before the pandemic.

I'm still enamored with Ben Franklin's writings--one of which says "When the well's dry we know the worth of water."

Update: Here is the chart tracking just how dry this season has been and indicating how bad the fire season might be. Only 1976-77 was drier year to date.

The full report analyzes scenarios for 10 different extremes of “total water levels,” a term that would apply to straightforward higher tides — day in and day out — as well as storm surges layered on top of higher tides. They range from 12 to 108 inches. But much of the emphasis is on a raised water level of 48 inches, a number that corresponds to the “likely” amount of sea level rise forecast in the Bay Area for 2120 by the California Ocean Protection Council.

This part caught my eye as we are enjoying a slightly quieter SFO although two nights ago was still quite bad

The findings go beyond large-scale numbers to highlight specific aspects of the approaching threat to how the region functions.

• Runways at San Francisco and Oakland airports would be largely under water.

It's fun to wander around the internet looking at various studies. This one is pretty short and leads to the factoid that

The current sea level rise is 3 mm/year. The data from the past can also be used for future projections, using a so-called semi-empirical model calibrated with the historically observed relationship between temperature and sea level. With the new data, this results in a projected increase in the 21st century of 24-131 cm, depending on our emissions and thus on the extent of global warming.

Keep in mind, the highest-water mark of 131cm is 51 inches or close to the "most likely" 48 inch rise in the Bay Area study. You will have to decide if using the highest prediction is an April Fool's joke or not.

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